TC50: Story Something creates personal stories for your children

Story Something, one of the TechCrunch50 companies kept under wraps until today’s live event in San Francisco (click here for a live stream from the show), lets you create a personalized story for your child that they can take with them anywhere.

The founding team says parents spend less than five minutes a day reading to their kids and that children love hearing about themselves as the main character in fairy tales. So the idea is to generate fairy tales with your children’s names in them. The site has several pre-loaded stories into which you stick your family names, then either print them out or e-mail them to an iPhone or a Kindle.

There are two formats — one is similar to a template while another is like the old choose-your-own-adventure books. The children can choose what happens next — for example, do they help a fictional dragon in the story or do they go home? Story Something gets the stories it uses in two ways: through crowdsourcing and through contracts with established children’s authors, many of whom are looking for new outlets in which to publish.

Users can get a limited trial for 10 to 15 days. After that, they’ll be asked to buy a monthly subscription for about $3. The company is entering a private beta over the next few days. Story Something currently has two employees, who have worked with about 20 separate authors and have commissioned 50 stories. They’ll target mommy bloggers at first, and encourage them to share the results through their social networks.

Investor Feedback

TechCrunch50 judges who reviewed Story Something’s live presentation had this to say:

Don Dodge, Microsoft’s director of business development for emerging business: Very scalable, low-cost. It’s the criteria any angel investor would look for.

Ron Conway, angel investor: Would follow-up with an additional meeting.

Click here for more startup news coming out of the TechCrunch50 conference today.